El Salvador calls for showdown with gangs to stem rising murder rate

Scene of crime ... an alleged bus attack by mara members that left 11 dead in June 2010. Photograph: Jose Cabezas/AFP/Getty Images

El Salvador's president Mauricio Funes has ratified a law banning ultraviolent mara youth gangs, criminal organisations and the "social extermination" groups that claim to combat them, in a bid to stem a spiralling murder rate.

Funes signed the law on the eve of his visit to Mexico earlier this month, during which he appealed to his Mexican counterpart, Felipe Calderón, to support central America in its battle against organised crime.

Threats against public transport by the maras, in retaliation for a stiff new sentence regime, shut down travel for as much as three days in some places, with commuters offered army transport and police escorts.

The new rules double the maximum prison sentence for minors of 16 or 17 years, from seven to 15 years.

Although Funes is El Salvador's first socialist leader in three decades, he has no qualms about calling in the troops to enforce law and order, much as in Mexico. But public opinion is divided on the issue.

The powerful Catholic church supports the new law. But Antonio Rodriguez, a Spanish priest and head of a programme to prevent juvenile violence, who claims to be defending social outcasts and not the maras themselves, criticised the government's "authoritarian" attitude.

The maras account for some 30,000 youths in El Salvador, out of a population of 6 million. Last year the authorities registered 4,365 murders, an average of 12 a day. Many are blamed on the maras.

The maras are increasingly linked with drug trafficking and organised crime, not only in El Salvador but also in Honduras and Guatemala. This month Álvaro Colom, Guatemala's Social Democrat president, raised the possibility of all three countries jointly passing legislation to combat the maras.